RESOLUCIÓN N.º 1120/MEGC/

Jeffrey Alexander’s work on trauma provides a productive springboard for the idea of cultural trauma.157 Alexander approaches the concept of trauma from a sociological and extremely constructivist angle, claiming that, on a collective level, there are no events that are naturally or inherently traumatic. Instead, he argues, traumas are fundamentally and solely social constructs: “First and foremost, I maintain that events do not, in and of themselves, create collective trauma. Events are not inherently traumatic. Trauma is a socially mediated attribution”.158 _{He goes on to write that}

“[t]raumatic status is attributed to real or imagined phenomena, not because of their actual harmfulness or their objective abruptness, but because these phenomena are believed to have abruptly, and harmfully, affected collective identity”.159 To a certain extent, Alexander’s position marks the extreme opposite of Caruth’s argument: while for Caruth, trauma stands outside of the realm of symbolic representation, Alexander claims that trauma can only ever be grasped on a socio-cultural level, implying that there are no objective qualities to any traumatic event. Alexander’s assumption of a total constructedness might appear as a seductive antidote to Caruth’s notion of a total literalness. However, his approach is no less problematic – if only because it risks promoting relativism: if there really is nothing that sets traumatic events apart from other historical occurrences, why does Alexander employ the term “trauma” at all, especially since it tends to psychologise cultural, historical, and socio-political processes? What makes these “traumatic” events and their interpretation different from other historical occurrences if it is not some kind of intrinsic quality? The question arises whether, hypothetically speaking, any event could be conceptualised and constructed as “traumatic”. Considering his rather bold hypothesis, it is surprising that Alexander’s understanding of “traumatic” events turns out to be quite conventional – he lists events such as the Holocaust, the Nanking Massacre, and the Indian Partition. Furthermore, although he strongly distinguishes himself from Caruth and what he calls

156 _{James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust. Narrative and the Consequence of}

Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 89.

157 _{See Jeffrey Alexander et al. (eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity; see also Jeffrey}

Alexander, Trauma.

158 _{Jeffrey Alexander, Trauma, p. 13.} 159 _{Ibid., p. 14.}

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“psychoanalytic versions” of trauma,160 _{he still operates with a similar, event-based}

notion of trauma, centred on abruptness and a “sense of shock and fear”.161 _This

particular understanding of trauma has come under attack in recent years, as it does not capture traumatic phenomena that result from other more sustained forms of violence (such as racism, sexualised violence, capitalist exploitation or systematic abuse), or occur without direct human intervention (such as natural disasters).162 Finally and most importantly, I find the adjective “cultural” in Alexander’s concept rather misleading. He is not really interested in the dynamics that shape cultural mediations of trauma – as they are provided by works of art, the media, or politics – but rather in the ways in which trauma, as an initially individualised psychological phenomenon, is collectivised. Alexander’s interest lies squarely in “collective” trauma, whereas a theory of “cultural” trauma, such as the one I am interested in, takes into account the ways in which trauma travels through and is shaped by various media.163 _{While Alexander’s concept is therefore helpful to shift the focus away from}

trauma as a purely psychological phenomenon, it reaches a limit where the relationship between trauma, media and hyper- or remediation is concerned.

A bridge between Alexander’s approach and the questions driving my work is provided by what Anne Fuchs, in her seminal study on the Dresden bombing, describes as “impact” events and narratives.164 _{These events – which need not be but often are}

traumatic – are marked by a particular dynamic which Fuchs describes as follows:

Impact narratives make visible what one might call ‘the excess of the Real’ at the level of historical occurrence. By referencing the original impact event as an excessive rupture, they summon new re-imaginings and representations that, however, always communicate their own inadequacy. This ineluctable dialectic between the overabundance of images and their simultaneous inadequacy is thus the driving engine, propelling the generation of further impact narratives.165

160 _{Ibid., p. 8.} 161 _{Ibid., p. 15.}

162 _{The need to adapt trauma theory to other, non-punctual forms of violence is stressed by Michael}

Rothberg, ‘Preface. Beyond Tancred and Clorinda’ and by Stef Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing, pp. 20- 37.

163 _{The distinction between “collective” and “cultural” trauma suggested here functions in analogy to}

the theory of “collective” and “cultural” memory, as it was first introduced by Jan Assmann. Whereas collective memory, broadly speaking, encompasses the ways in which memories are socially mediated and transferred within groups, “cultural” memory looks at their transmission and institutionalisation in various media and across large temporal distances, see Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift,

Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 7th ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013).

164 _{Anne Fuchs, After the Dresden Bombing. Pathways of Memory, 1945 to the Present (Houndmills,}

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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I find the notion of the “impact event” or narrative useful for two reasons. Firstly, it helps to tackle the problem brought up by my summary of Alexander, i.e. the question of what sets traumatic events apart from other historical occurrences. With reference to Fuchs, one can say that these events are marked by a certain “historical excess” that provokes continuous representations and remediations which, however, never manage to truly capture the event – this then initiates a new cycle of representation and so on. Secondly, and this is crucial, the concept of “impact narratives” stresses the inextricable connection between powerful events and their medial representations in a way that Alexander’s concept does not. Media and the dynamics of remediation are

integral to the production of “impact events”, as they make the original experience

historically and geographically mobile as well as accessible to those who were not directly involved, thus creating the conditions for a possible lasting impact. It is here that I would like to introduce a third important concept, which not only perceives of trauma as a culturally (re-)mediated and media-dependent phenomenon, but also enables an enquiry into the politics of its representation and circulation, thus bringing together many of the issues raised in this chapter. In an article entitled ‘From Sarajevo to 9/11: Travelling Memory and the Trauma Economy’,166 _{Terri Tomsky introduces}

the term “travelling trauma”.167 _{Coined in analogy to Astrid Erll’s influential concept}

of “travelling memory”,168 _{it is used by Tomsky to capture the darker aspects of a}

globalised Holocaust memory. She asserts that the transformation of the Holocaust into a mobile and border-crossing memory emblem cannot be separated from the establishment and dynamics of a larger “trauma economy”,169 _{in which some}

experiences of trauma are valued highly, while others “fail to evoke recognition and subsequently, compassion and aid”.170 _{Tomsky’s approach is helpful as it zooms in on}

the “economic, cultural, discursive and political structures” in which traumas are represented and in which they travel,171 i.e. their material, medial and mediated dimension. Impact events and narratives are by nature a form of “travelling” memory (and, in some instances, trauma); while the notion of the impact event therefore allows us to foreground media(tisa)tion, the idea of “travelling trauma” enables us to capture

166 _{Terri Tomsky, ‘From Sarajevo to 9/11’.} 167 _{Ibid., pp. 50ff.}

168 _{Astrid Erll, ‘Travelling Memory’.}

169 _{Terri Tomsky, ‘From Sarajevo to 9/11’, p. 49.} 170 _{Ibid., p. 49.}

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the routes and rules which shape the mobility of these mediatisations. Tomsky’s concept can be extended beyond the scope of her research: in the context of Holocaust discourse, “travelling trauma” would then designate an approach which focuses not so much on the problem of trauma’s (un-)representability – for its (over-)representation is simply a given in a global media culture – as on the aesthetics, dynamics, and politics of its representation. In the context of the Holocaust, it brings into focus the event’s quality as a culturally mediated impact event and “floating” or,172 as Mandel puts it, “master signifier”,173 _{which travels transgenerationally, transmedially and/or}

transnationally. As such, the concept of “travelling trauma” complicates the notions of sacralisation, unspeakability and incompatibility, because it understands the Holocaust as fundamentally implicated in representational and discursive networks and puts these entanglements at the centre.

This stance differs substantially from Caruth’s and Hirsch’s position, although they too are concerned with issues of mediation and travel. However, their notion of travel involves contagious immediacy and thus a disregard for the material, cultural and political conditions of trauma’s mobility. This is also reflected in their conceptualisation of media as transparent carriers of a pristine and unalterable meaning. The idea of “travelling trauma” instead stresses that, during its travels, the meaning of the event is not simply passed on from one medium to the next, but actually shaped and (re-)created via these media(tisa)tions. This is due to the frames, tropes, and narratives that medial depictions at the same time apply and rely on, which, in turn, depend on the ways in which they are received by their audiences.

In the following section I will demonstrate how the notion of “travelling trauma” connects to a number of issues that are negotiated in the texts under consideration. These are tied to transmedial, transgenerational and transnational forms of travel and the ways in which they intersect. I will moreover introduce a range of key concepts and terms which will guide my readings of the primary literature.

Transgenerational Travel: Adoption, Affiliation, Appropriation

The forms of transgenerational travel that I am interested in do not involve the Holocaust as part of a fragmented family history, as is usually the case in postmemory- related research. The texts under discussion here focus on the transmission of this

172 _{Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts, p. 99.}

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history via routes that, in some way or other, point beyond the biological family and rely heavily on media and mediatisation. When looking at Holocaust memory as

adopted rather than inherited, two issues spring to mind: strategies of affiliation on the

one hand and the problem of appropriation on the other. These are, in many respects, two sides of the same coin, for the same processes that enable Holocaust memories to travel and be embraced transgenerationally – thus potentially securing their future – also open up the possibility of unregulated circulation and appropriation.

As mentioned above, Marianne Hirsch introduces the term “affiliative” postmemory to capture culturally mediated forms of Holocaust commemoration that involve those who do not have a familial connection to the events. The issue of affiliation thus raises questions about the ways in which those not personally related to a history connect to it and why. The realms of popular culture and institutionalised Holocaust remembrance have seen a surge in affiliative strategies of remembrance, which are, of course, a logical consequence of the dying out of the survivor generation. They often draw on new media, for example in the case of the very recent World Jewish Congress Campaign “#WeRemember”,174 _{which urges people from all over the}

world to embrace memories of the Holocaust via a hashtag. The campaign attempts to engage new, and specifically younger, audiences and generations. Yad Vashem went a step further on the occasion of the 2017 Holocaust Memorial Day by creating a Facebook page which allowed users to randomly link up to and “remember” a Holocaust victim from its records.175 A future without survivors calls for new ways of transmitting the memory of the Holocaust to increasingly distanced generations. At the same time, these new pathways of remembrance also raise some uncomfortable questions, not least of all what exactly is supposed to be passed on in the process – historical knowledge of the events or some form of (simulated) emotional and experiential connection? Yad Vashem’s campaign and the afore-mentioned survivor holograms seem to point to the latter, but, as Amy Hungerford has noted, such emotional-experiential approaches are not unproblematic:

Memory (the knowledge of what we have experienced) is privileged over learning; in much public discourse on the subject of the Holocaust, for example, it has become more important to ‘remember’ the Holocaust than simply to learn about it. And the emerging discipline we are calling Holocaust Studies has become beholden to statements of personal connection, to the need to explain one’s connection to one’s subject in a way

174 _{See <http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/weremember> [accessed: 25 January 2017].}

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that is not required by other kinds of scholarly work.176

Moreover, it is worth investigating why the act of remembering is so ethically charged in Holocaust discourse. Why is it more urgent to remember the Holocaust than any other historical event and why should everyone, even those with no personal connection to the event, remember it? Standard responses usually point to ongoing instances of Holocaust denial and of anti-Semitism, alongside the vague suggestion that remembrance ensures that such atrocities will “never again” repeat themselves. However, it is debatable whether more remembrance will really help solve these issues or whether, as some theorists in the field of transnational Holocaust memory have argued, the omnipresence of Holocaust memories and analogies is (ethically) unproductive.177 Remembering alone does not ensure an ethical engagement with the past, as the next sub-chapter will demonstrate.

The texts considered in this study all deal with the various and intersecting aspects of “travelling trauma”. Maxim Biller’s novella Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz considers the transgenerational travel of Holocaust memory, alongside issues of post-Holocaust Jewish identity which are negotiated in relation to the works of Bruno Schulz. Eva Menasse’s Quasikristalle and Benjamin Stein’s Die Leinwand also interrogate the transgenerational mobility of the Holocaust signifier, focusing on the ways in which this mobility relates to the processes of hyper- and remediation. Finally, Vladimir Vertlib’s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur addresses the transnational migration of traumatic memories, alongside the problems that arise when these memories are meant to be translated from one culture into another.

My reading of Eva Menasse’s novel Quasikristalle seeks to complicate the above- mentioned notion of “affiliative” postmemory, by showing that affiliative conceptualisations of memory, while pointing beyond the biological family, still operate within the realm of what Marianne Hirsch herself calls the “idiom of family”.178 _{They might thus destabilise the biological family as a carrier of memories,}

but preserve, and indeed extend, the power of the family as a symbolic resource in memory discourse. Menasse’s text also helps to problematise a claim that is often made in connection with affiliative forms of Holocaust commemoration, as they underpin,

176 _{Amy Hungerford, The Holocaust of Texts, p. 155.}

177 _{This is for example the stance adopted by Dirk Moses, see Dirk Moses, ‘Genocide and the Terror of}

History’ and Dirk Moses, ‘Does the Holocaust Reveal or Conceal Other Genocides?’.

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for example, Alison Landsberg’s concept of “prosthetic memory”,179 _{or Michael}

Rothberg’s idea of “multidirectional memory”.180 _{They both posit that there is an}

added ethical value attached to these forms of memory, because they give rise to non- essentialist forms of community. In contrast to other forms of instrumentalisable and inherently nationalistic collective memory, “prosthetic” memories allegedly function independently from any pre-existing bonds: “As a result, these technologies [Landsberg is referring to the mass media here] can structure ‘imagined communities’ that are not necessarily geographically or nationally bounded and that do not presume any kind of affinity among community members”.181 _{However, Menasse’s text shows}

that the non-familial bonds explored in Quasikristalle rest either on the firm basis of ethnicity (as a Jew her protagonist relates to other Jewish characters) or a shared legacy of trauma (as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor she relates to other victims of trauma). What Landsberg and others thus present as the result of the affiliative process – identification – is thus actually its starting point and basis.

The issue of identity politics therefore still plays a major role in an age of remediated Holocaust memory. This is not surprising, when considering that the dying out of the survivor generation creates an identarian vacuum: younger generations of Jews may find it increasingly difficult to construct their Jewish identities based on the experience of trauma and thus need to find new ways of approaching the topic. At the same time, the death of the survivors marks a transition from their embodied experiences and memories towards a culture of disembodied, highly mobile “prosthetic” memories which can be easily appropriated, for example for the construction of victim identities. Both of these problems – the question of post- Holocaust Jewish identity and the issue of appropriation – are negotiated, albeit in very different ways, in the texts by Maxim Biller and Benjamin Stein. Maxim Biller’s novella Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz remediates and appropriates a range of traditions from Eastern European (Jewish) culture, such as “ghetto writing”, the sadomasochistic constellation and Eastern European heritages of surrealism, to create a Jewish identity that is no longer bound up with German writing traditions and what I call ‘perpetrator poetics’. However, this very move points to the fact that Biller’s writing is still deeply

179 _{Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory.} 180 _{Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory.} 181 _{Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, p. 8.}

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caught up in the dynamics of what Dan Diner has called the “negative Symbiose”,182 i.e. the inability to conceive German-Jewish relations without recourse to the Holocaust and the victim-perpetrator binary. Biller’s novella appropriates the works of the Galician-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, himself a victim of the Holocaust, to illustrate this negative take on German-Jewish relations.

The issues taken up in Biller’s work are different from those that shape Benjamin Stein’s novel Die Leinwand, which offers a fictionalisation of the infamous Wilkomirski affair. The text emphasises the hypermediation of Holocaust memory in the age of remediation and the boundless mobility this engenders: once personal memories are externalised with the help of the media, they become transportable and, particularly after the death of the survivor generation, appropriable. Stein’s novel shifts the focus away from the issue of unspeakability to the problems generated by unregulated, mass-mediated circulation and appropriation. The issue of

representational appropriateness so intimately connected to the unspeakability

paradigm is hence superseded by questions of ownership in Stein’s novel: who can lay claim to the memory of the Holocaust after the death of the survivor generation? And who can guarantee the rights of ownership? Stein’s novel highlights that the transgenerational travel of trauma in the age of remediation is not so much linked to the psychology of trauma, but to what Oren Baruch Stier calls “memorial propriety”, i.e. issues that concern “the symbolic ownership of Holocaust property”.183

Transmedial Travel: Authenticity and Remediation – Empathy and Oversaturation

Holocaust representation as remediation, i.e. the notion of the Holocaust as a heavily mediatised, “travelling” or “floating” signifier, does not only affect the transgenerational transfer of memories, it also remaps the territory of unrepresentability. Contemporary discourse seems to be less fixated on the questions of representational accuracy or appropriateness, but rather struggles with the problem